I’m delighted to be able to invite you along to green finance training from our friends at the JustMoney Movement. There are two dates coming up:

Wednesday 11 December (12:30–2pm) or Monday 20 January (7–8.30pm)

The invitation is for you and for anyone else you know who is involved in church finances – probably treasurers mostly, but perhaps church secretaries, elders, green activists and others too – to learn about potential greening action for local churches in this key area.

We know that the current climate for charity banking is very challenging, even before you add ethical concerns into the mix, so the training will explore a range of tactics for engaging with banks if switching to more ethical banking is not an option.

These sessions will also be a peer learning space, for sharing and gathering stories. I hopeful we’ll have some churches who have successfully made a switch to a greener bank who are happy to talk through that process. 

The training will also touch on some issues beyond banking, to support the new questions in the Eco Church survey which cover things like ethical purchasing and investment policies too. There will be plenty of actions to explore in the wider context of greening our finances – as well as a general encouragement to equip individuals in our churches to consider these questions too.  

We will be contacting every local church treasurer on our database – about 1,200! – this week, but there may still be some people who slip through the net, so I would be hugely grateful if you could please share this within your synod (although I appreciate the first of the dates is next Wednesday, so might be a tall order to get it out in good time!).

I’m really thrilled that this training has been offered to us. It is a great opportunity to take some meaningful action. You might be aware that, unfortunately, the URC (centrally, at least – several Synod Moderators did express an interest) didn’t sign the latest letter to banks from churches and other organisations calling for an end to the financing of fossil fuel production. I was disappointed we couldn’t. Methodists and several other churches did sign up to this, but our finance officer was (very reasonably) concerned about trying to apply any pressure on banks when our local churches are often already struggling with accessing any kind of charity account, let alone an ethical one. We still do want to take action where possible, and this training should put our treasurers, and the whole URC, in a much better position to be able to make further demands of our banks and financial institutions.

BTW, I’ve heard that the Salvation Army has created a bank of its own, for exactly this purpose – ethical banking for churches. I’ve asked if the JustMoney team can explore this too.

If you’d like further information on the training, please do ask – and please do share it as much as you can!

Best wishes,

Roo Stewart, Head of Public Issues | The United Reformed Church